Backtalk; Search for Values Finds Gold in Pro Basketball

By MIKE WISE

Published: October 18, 1998

No one has guaranteed Michael Jordan's return, just as no one can safely say when the season will start. If it's not young knuckleheads failing to mature, it's old sages saying goodbye. And all the while, these grown men who make their living off a Y.M.C.A. recreation cannot seem to divvy up $2 billion.

It is a good time to loathe this game.

Or to wait for some curmudgeon who once played in satin shorts and sideburns to come out with a book detailing the demise of the National Basketball Association. What with labor disputes, player insurrections and flat-out bad basketball, Bill Bradley had more ammunition at his disposal than when he ran the floor with Willis Reed and Walt Frazier.

Yet in his fourth book, ''Values of the Game,'' the former New York Knick and former United States Senator does not fire away. At a time when the league is canceling games and searching for an identity after Larry, Magic and very soon Michael, one of its alumni is actually trumpeting its virtues.

''I wanted to show that even in the midst of all these other things going on, there are some things that last, some eternal values in the game that are accessible to a father and mother who want to teach the game to their children,'' Bradley said over lunch recently at a Manhattan restaurant. ''Or for high school coaches who are shaping people as much as they did 30 years ago, I wanted to show the continuity that is there, while not whitewashing what are the bad aspects of the current game.''

Bradley writes about learning more from people by playing a 3-on-3 game with them than he does talking with them for a week. He uses photographs he selected and captions he wrote to portray the game as a laboratory for shared human experience.

Instead of drawing distinctions between eras, he tries to bridge a gap between his generation of players and today's. There are passages about the league's problems that hint at disenchantment, but over the book's 158 pages, he celebrates the pro game much more than he denigrates it.

Why all this sappiness in the midst of N.B.A. anarchy? That's apparently what happens when you walk into an empty gym, pick up a ball and start dropping in jump shots, as Bradley did one morning two years ago at his local Y in Montclair, N.J. His time at Stanford University as a visiting professor last year fostered that feeling, as he got to know the coaches and players on the Cardinal's Final Four men's team.

''The experience reawakened something in me that had been dormant for 20 years,'' he said. ''So I decided I wanted to write a book about my love for the game. At the same time I wanted to try and express it in a way that was different than 'Life on the Run,' '' he added, referring to his book about 21 days on the road as a professional athlete in 1974. ''I wanted to use basketball as the way to talk about some deeper things and long-lasting values.''

Given his political history, one might wonder if Bradley partly used the book to deliver character-building messages, words that could resonate with a public searching for a new Democrat.

''Whether I was a candidate in politics or not, these are things I believe,'' he said, scoffing at the notion. ''The book would've been written whatever the circumstances. I had a couple of drafts where I would draw lessons and apply them to politics. I thought, no, no, no, that's not what this book is. This book is about values of the game and life.''

He did, in fact, mention that he would decide by the end of the year whether to run for President in 2000. ''There are two threshold questions,'' he said. ''Can you add appreciably to the public welfare, given your skill, sense and experience? And second, do I, my wife and family want to jump off a 50-story building with no idea whether there is a net at the bottom? I'll answer those and make an internal decision.''

Though ''Values of the Game'' (published by the Artisan imprint of Workman Publishing) never delves deep into troubling issues surrounding professional basketball, Bradley does express genuine concern for the sport in the next millennium.

''It's possible to drive fans away,'' he writes in a chapter titled ''Respect.'' ''Gratuitous violence (Latrell Sprewell assaulting his coach), high ticket prices ($1,350 courtside seats at Madison Square Garden) and a perception that players care only about the money (Kevin Garnett's rejection of a $100 million contract as insufficient) quickly put barriers between the fans and the game.''

But after every knock, Bradley soon returns to the redemptive qualities of the sport, as if it means too much to him to scorn completely. He makes the monotony of practice seem purposeful and relationships formed on the court seem more valuable and genuine than many made off it.

In a time of labor strife in the National Basketball Association and petulance and problems at all levels -- a time when there is little reason to love the game -- it is good to know someone still feels that way about basketball.

Photo: Bill Bradley leaping on Willis Reed as the Knicks defeated the Lakers, 4 games to 1, in the 1973 N.B.A. finals. (George Kalinsky)